Almost there...

I am almost finished. I've taken both CS finals (312 and 340), my guitar final, and my Old Testament final. Thanks to a merciful professor I have a summer to complete the projects that I got _very_ far behind on when I got sick.

But this darn Physical Science final won't go away by itself. It's funny. A class that under normal circumstances I would ace easily (I got 98 on the first midterm, before I got sick), consequently turned into the class that I quit going to in order to not get any farther behind in my (more important) CS classes (since you can use your final exam score as your grade in the class).

I've read half a semester worth of lecture slides tonight. I'll probably get through most of the second half before I go to bed. Tomorrow I'll be reading the book. And when I say, "reading the book", I mean the whole book. 36 chapters. And then taking the final. What should have been one of the easiest A's of my life has turned into, "This will take a miracle, and I'll take whatever I can get."

Ah the wonderful life of a student. bleh.

Not-so-random thought Thursday:

I have 5 projects.

I have 5 days.
I have to work in Windows.
That is not my amused face.

The Lunch of Champions

Sometimes when Nicole has stuff to do I get to stay on campus all day. This isn't necessarily a bad thing because at my office or in the CS laptop lab I have an extra monitor to plug in to and I can get lots done with few interruptions. The only problem is that it sometimes gets a little hungry, because the only food I keep at my office these days is some oatmeal that I have for breakfast when I work in the mornings on Tues. and Thurs.

Enter the economics of choosing a cheap, filling lunch that can provide enough calories to last several hours and taste good enough that I want to eat it. If you believe everything you see on TV, a Snickers bar is the perfect answer, except for two problems. First, I can't stand nuts, or any food that contains them. Second, at $0.65 or so the cost/calorie ratio, while not too bad, is literally blown out of the water by the "real" lunch of coding champions: The Granny B's pink sugar cookie.

Your average candy bar has a calorie content of between 150 and 200, so we'll say the average is around 175. at $0.65, that's about 2.7 calories per cent. Now some of you will look at that wonderful pink sugar cookie's package and say, "That's only 113 calories." And that would be because you forgot to look at the serving size: 1/4 cookie. That's right, baby: 452 delicious calories in that marvel of baking ingenuity. At $0.75 in the bookstore, or $0.80 in the vending machines here on campus you have either 6 cents per calorie or 5.65 cents per calorie, respectively.

Add to that a bottle of delicious whole milk (a delicacy I don't get to enjoy much these days), and you have a 602 calorie lunch (enough fuel for about 6-7 hours of programming before I start to get hungry again) for a grand total of $1.50.

I know some of you (Nicole?) are rolling your eyes right about now, but if you can find me a better tasting, healthy lunch that I can get anywhere on campus for $1.50, I'll eat that instead.

Where have all the "real" hackers gone?

A real hacker is a special kind of person. I'm not talking about the idiot crackers and script-kiddies that break in to networks and who turn your neighboor's great-aunt's computer into a spyware-infested, slower-than-cold-tar bot-net slave. While I'm not in the same hacking universe as a "real" hacker (people like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Steve Wozniak, etc...), I like to think of myself as a budding hacker. If I want to learn about something, I start digging through the documentation, source code, whatever I can find. When I see something cool in a website, I'll take a look at the source and see if I can figure out how it works. When I discovered an un-implemented feature in the port of my favorite text editor to Apple's Cocoa Framework, I started going through the source to find where I need to add the code that will make it work. (this got side-shelved by the demands of school, but I'll finish it off this summer)

Part of this is a natural curiosity for how things work. Part of it is the fact that I now have the knowledge to make some semblance of sanity of quite a lot of the 1's and 0's that make the world run these days (given time to look through it).

Given this curiosity, when I got to work today to see everyone gathered around my buddy's computer, I naturally came over to see what was going on. Much to my surprise, it turns out that some lazy-assed idiot has cloned Justin's extremely slick, one-of-a-kind website. (trust me, it actually _is_ one-of-a-kind). Not cloned as in copied the source code, modified it so it's the same but different. Not cloned as in copied the whole thing to his own server and replaced images, blurbs, etc. with his own material. Cloned as in sucking the content off of Justin's server, changing the font, and translating the blurbs to Spanish. Cloned as in using the exact same javascript file from its location on Justin's server. Justin is in the middle of some "minor retaliation", so don't be surprised if there is a little "addition" to the slacker's page if you go look at it. And don't be surprised, Mr. Sebastian Lazy-pants if your web presence takes a turn for the worse... There's an amusing little anecdote to this here.

What the heck? What ever happened to, "gee, I wonder how that works...", or, "hmm, I wonder what I could do with that..." ???? If you're going to go through the trouble of copy/cloning somebody's work, it's not that much trouble to learn how it works and make it your own, with a little note saying, "Thanks to Justin for the ideas".

I just can't understand that way of thinking...

It's working! It's working!

For those of you reading my blog who are Mac users, this may interest you. I've been beating my head on a way to have iCal tell me nicely when I have a deadline coming up, and I finally got a working solution this morning. You can read about it on my other blog if you are so inclined.

Found this quite interesting...

An interesting awareness test. Try it out.

Make sure to let it go all the way to the end. And if you comment, don't ruin the fun for those who haven't yet.

One down, many more to go...

Well, it's all here. For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about, let me fill you in on some details.


I hate shaving. My mom took me to Wal-Mart when I was 12 or 13 and we bought me a razor, and I was pretty dang cool. I was only shaving peach fuzz, but it was cool. Then I went to Basic Training. There, if you weren't satisfactorily shaven, a drill sergeant would hand you a Bic disposable razor, and you'd dry shave on the spot. Now there is a very good reason for soldiers to be clean shaven. If you have all kinds of scruff on your face and neck, your protective mask won't seal and gas can get in. So I shaved every night. I wasn't too concerned about the fact that I got about a billion razor bumps and ingrown hairs every day because it wasn't to big of a deal compared to the 120 degree, 90% humidity days at the range, but I quickly lost whatever remains of the "it's cool to shave" idea that had survived the previous 6 years.

Then I went on a mission. 2 more years of shaving every day, with all the accompanying razor bumps and ingrown hairs. By this point I just assumed that it was normal and happened to everyone. I resigned myself to the dragging feeling of 17-bladed razors and figured I was in for a lifetime of hating shaving. So when I got home from my mission, I adopted a "shave for church" policy. That was okay for the next few years, but I still hated shaving. Then a couple of years ago when I started working on campus, I had to adopt a "shave on Wednesday and Sunday" policy, and I still hated shaving. That was when I introduced the policy of a "vacation beard". Whenever I'm away from my on-campus job for more than a week, I just grow a beard until I get back. Now I am totally in favor of this, but Nicole is _not_ a fan. We're talking less of a fan than I am of shaving. Did I mention I _hate_ shaving?

Well. A few weeks ago, I guy I know on a Unix mailing list mentioned he had bought a new shaving brush, soap, and double-edged safety razor (the kind that uses old-school razor blades). Now this didn't come as too much of a surprise from a guy who makes his own soap, but he linked a couple of articles about old-school shaving. Being the curious person I am, I started clicking through them, and was somewhat surprised to learn that it is indeed possible to shave and not get bumps and ingrown hairs by the gazillions. I was also _very_ surprised to learn that there are people who shave and like it.

There had to be something to this. So I started looking around some more and learned that double-edged razor blades sell for about $5 for a pack of 10. That beats the tar out of the $38 I paid for my last pack of 16 blades for my Fusion. So, I decided to give it a try. I made an early investment of my birthday present from us and bought a decent shaving brush and some Italian shaving cream called Proraso. Much better. The brush and decent shaving cream reduced my bumps and ingrown hairs by a drastic amount. Not to mention making shaving a much more relaxing experience. The blades still drag, and I actually notice much quicker when my razor blades are getting dull. So now the Fusion by comparison with the brush and cream is really starting to suck. I can shave 3 or 4 times before I have to use a new blade, 5 or 6 if I'm wearing my patient pants.

So I started looking a lot harder at safety razors and where to get good blades for them, when I came across a link to a website called StraightRazorPlace. Now this was really something I could get on board with. Most of you who know me know I like knives, axes, basically anything with blade. Some of you will remember me sitting in church sharpening my knife after we finished with the sacrament in my younger days. So let me see if I got this right. High quality steel blade, never have to buy razor blades again, and if the good folks at StraightRazorPlace were to be believed, a closer, longer-lasting shave than with my old multi-bladed nemesis. So I ordered a straight razor, a leather and linen strop, and a 3 micron, 8000 grit diamond plate to hone my new friend on. They all arrived, and last night, after a little work on the edge, I had my first try at a _really_ old school shave.


It turns out that sharpening a razor to shave my Brillo pad face with is a whole different story than sharpening anything else. It also turns out that there will be some serious learning curve to follow. But, on my cheeks where the easy part is, I'm quite impressed. I only nicked myself twice, and those were minor ones that had stopped bleeding by the time I finished shaving. This does not count all the razor bumps I shaved off from Wednesday's shave, but I'll just wait a few more days for the next time to let all the aftermath of my 5-blades at a time shave go away. This evening, following some instructions by on of the gurus at another old-school-shaving website, BadgerAndBlade (because good shaving brushes are made of badger hair) I touched up my razor a little more. So now I will wait patiently for a few more days, and give it another shot.

The end. (at least for a couple days)

Priceless Moments In Algorithm Analysis...

I'm currently taking CS 312: Algorithms Analysis. This is quite a class, as we deal with how efficiently computers solve problems, and how well that efficiency holds up as the size of the problem increases. It's largely theoretical, although the projects give us a chance to flex our newly-found algorithmic muscles. Despite the fact that we deal most of the time in abstract, gnarly math that most mere mortals would never need to know exist, I like the class.

This morning, we were talking about using a system called Dynamic Programming to determine to optimal sequence in which to perform a chain of matrix multiplications. Why? you ask? Let's just say that the computer-generated graphics that make Yoda a star depend on it critically.

Anyways, we were about 3/4 of the way through the algorithm, and were talking about how many computations it would take to determine all cells in a diagonal of our resulting optimal solution. And, without further ado, I give you our Priceless Moment In Algorithms Analysis:

Dr. R*: "So we can see where we're getting our optimal solutions from, now we need a simple explanation."

Me (dryly): "At this point in this class, we've gone far beyond the realm of simple explanations."

Dr. R* and everyone else: lots of laughter

Dr. R*: "How about layers of simple explanations"

Me: "We'll buy that."

In Summary: I love what I do.

It's that time of year again...

Last night I had a devil of a time getting to sleep. Perhaps it was an omen that my cell phone clock would not update with the time change and I'd miss church (which happened, by the way). There are many more "perhaps-es" that I could list, but one of them has been growing more and more annoying. My long, gnarly, brillo-pad-ish hair was curling around into my ears, and even tickling my jawbone.

It's getting warmer, and even though it's almost certain to snow again, the combination of annoying sleep prevention and lack of need for cold-weather insulation indicated that it was time for a hair cut. I'm not a huge fan of paying someone else to cut my hair, so I almost always (except when Nicole really puts her foot down) cut it myself. A few pics for your viewing amusement:




My hat fits much better again now.

A funnier tribute to Gary has never been paid...

And probably will never.
Nicole even laughed. I was so proud.

Change of plans...

I was going to blog tonight about something I'll never understand, but I just saw some sad news. Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons, died today. Just thought I'd tell ya'll, since I know you're all so into DnD...

Anyway, just for kicks and in honor of Gary, I think I'll go roll my d20. If it rolls higher than 10 I'll go to bed. If not, I'll do some more homework.

P.S. to my post the other day about anti-biotics.

It's also amazing that a lot of antibiotics can kill not only bronchitis, but enough of the normal bacteria in your body to make you grow mold on your tongue. Lots of it. And it kinda sneaks up on you because for the first day or two it just feels like your mouth and tongue are really dry. Weird, eh? I'm having all kinds of new experiences these days...

So if your doctor prescribes you Azithromycin, eat lots of yogurt.

Finally, something new and exciting...

Some of you (who have never had a programming project deadline) are probably wondering why I'm blogging at 2:15 in the morning, while my poor, sweet, sick wifey is sleeping peacefully in the other room. Well, I'll tell you.

To start with, I was the weak link in our little group for this group project deadline because I was sick and missed the 2 class periods that would have been the most helpful for this particular project. Consequently, I finished my part last (as you can see, about 2 hours after the midnight deadline). Since I had a Mountain Dew at around 9, and a box of marshmallow peeps that lasted until about midnight-thirty, I need a second to unwind (and think about my Sunday School lesson tomorrow that I haven't looked at yet).

But more importantly, I had a brand new experience yesterday (Friday, which I guess that's 2 yesterdays, since it's Sunday now). Many of you who know me will know that I'm not usually very antsy about spending a couple of bucks. If I buy something that was not very expensive and I don't like it or if it doesn't work out, I consider it a few dollar lesson. I have never in my life felt like I "wasted" a few bucks. Until Friday. Let me elaborate. I like fantasy. I like mythology. I am one of the few people you'll meet that thinks the original story of Beowulf (translated at least into middle-english for clarity) is a good read. So, when I saw a trailer for the movie Beowulf, I thought it might be kinda fun and I'd give it a shot. Nicole was going to "The Other Boelyn Girl" with some friends, so I'd mosey down to the Red Box and pick it up.

OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS!!!!! There is no other way to describe that movie than as lame-@%#-ed. I know some of you who will read this don't swear, so I pseudo-disguised it. But seriously. It actually followed one version of the story that I read a while back fairly closely, for about an hour. At which time I had had enough. Much more than enough. I've never encountered laziness and lame-osity (and just plain weirdness) on that kind of scale. I have no clue what the heck the producers of that show were thinking.

Producer-guy A: "Hey guys, do you think we could sell a movie that was done in video-game animation? We could get a couple decent actors (Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie) and spend a lot of rendering time on the trailer, so people would think it's only partially animated, and then we could suck up the rest of the movie and see if it actually works... Hey, pass me that joint. And another beer."

Producer-guy B: "Dude, what a good idea. Most of the people in our target audience haven't watched movies like Star Wars, or the Lord of the Rings, which use good animation, so no worries, they won't know that we're slacking off on their time and money... And quit asking to steal my high. We'll need all the marijuana we can get to talk any half-decent actor not to sue our pants of when they see what we do to their character. Hey, animation guy, what do you think?"

Animation Producer: "Whoah. There's like, all kinds of sparklies in the air. And when I wave my hand, it makes trails. Do you guys have any food? I'm hungry."

Seriously, folks, for the first time in my life I felt like I wasted a dollar. One dollar. I have spent a dollar on a new kind of pop that I didn't like, and not cared. I've spent 2 or 3 bucks on energy drinks that were nasty as heck, and not cared. I have never not finished an action movie. I've watched (and liked) action movies that received abysmal ratings (Fast and the Furious, XXX) But dang. This was a whole slough of firsts for me. I still can't believe it. I've almost lost my faith in action movies, like that I might start paying some small attention to ratings. And now I'm getting tired.

Ah, BYU

This card from Indexed marks one of the reasons I like BYU a lot. I once found my Ipaq at the lost and found here.